Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended that Donald Trump modify 10 national monuments created by his immediate predecessors, including shrinking the boundaries of at least four western sites, but the White House has refused to release this recommendation to the public.washingtonpost.com(See also Assaults on Government, Department of the Interior)

2017.10.02

The Interior Department’s inspector general's office has opened an investigation into Secretary Ryan Zinke’s use of taxpayer-funded charter planes, including a $12,000 trip from Las Vegas to an airport hear his hometown in Montana, and another trip in the Caribbean.politico.com(See also Department of the Interior, Corruption)

2017.10.05

Republican donors paid up to $5,000 per couple for a photo with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke at a fundraiser held during a taxpayer-funded trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands, frequently mixing politics with his Interior duties.politico.com(See also Corruption, Department of the Interior)

2017.10.23

Whitefish Energy, a two-year-old company, had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall, but from the same hometown as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, signed a $300 million contract to repair large portions of Puerto Rico's electrical infratructure.washingtonpost.com(See also Department of the Interior, Unprecedented Actions)

The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

2017.10.24

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has directed millions of dollars in political contributions since 2014 to a network of Washington operatives that prominent conservatives have accused of profiting by misleading donors.politico.com(See also Department of the Interior, Corruption)

2017.10.25

Members of Congress from both parties on Tuesday called for an investigation into a $300 million contract to restore power to Puerto Rico, awarded to a small 2-person company based in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana.apnews.com(See also Department of the Interior)

2017.10.27

A deal reached between the government and a small Montana energy company located in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown prohibits the government from reviewing labor costs or profits related to the company's relief efforts in Puerto Rico, according to a leaked copy of the contract.thehill.com(See also Corruption, Department of the Interior, Unprecedented Actions)

Donald Trump signed two presidential proclamations to scale back the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, opening federally-owned public lands for private development.axios.com(See also Department of the Interior, Domestic Policy)

The Bears Ears monument is shrinking from 1.5 million acres to 220,000 acres and the Grand Staircase-Escalante is going from 2 million acres to 1 million acres.

2017.12.05

One day after Donald Trump ordered an unprecedented reduction of a pair of national monuments in Utah, his administration announced plans to modify a slew of other protected wildlands scattered across the country, including shrinking Gold Butte National Monument, a nearly 300,000-acre site in Nevada, and Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which spans just over 100,000 acres on the California–Oregon border.buzzfeed.com(See also Department of the Interior, Environment)

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spent more than $14,000 on government helicopters this summer to take himself and staff to and from official events near Washington, D.C., in order to accommodate his attendance at a swearing-in ceremony for his replacement in Congress, and a horseback ride with Vice President Mike Pence.politico.com(See also Department of the Interior, Mike Pence, Corruption)

The Trump administration will allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States waters, giving the energy industry broad access to drilling rights in most parts of the outer continental shelf, including Pacific waters near California, Atlantic waters near Maine and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, reversing a ban on drilling, imposed by President Obama in his final days in office, that protected more than 100 million offshore acres along the Arctic and Eastern Seaboard.nytimes.com(See also Department of the Interior, Energy, Environment, Reversals)

More than three-quarters of the members of a federally chartered board advising the National Park Service have quit out of frustration that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had refused to meet with them or convene a single meeting last year, leaving the federal government without a functioning body to designate national historic or natural landmarkwashingtonpost.com(See also Assaults on Government, Department of the Interior)

An ethics watchdog group has asked the Interior Department’s Inspector General to investigate Zinke over an alleged violation of a federal conflict of interest law after reports surfaced that he assisted a Montana–based gun manufacturer and vendor of which he is a shareholder.splinternews.com(See also Department of the Interior, Conflicts of Interest)

The Trump administration is moving to reverse Obama-era rules barring hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in their dens.nbcnews.com(See also Reversals, Department of the Interior)

The Interior Department’s internal watchdog has launched a full investigation into a real estate deal involving a foundation established by Ryan Zinke and developers including Halliburton Chairman David Lesar, which will focus on whether Zinke violated conflict of interest laws.politico.com(See also Department of the Interior, Conflicts of Interest, Corruption)

2018.07.23

In a quest to shrink national monuments last year, senior Interior Department officials dismissed evidence that these public sites boosted tourism and spurred archaeological discoveries, according to documents the department released this month and retracted a day later.washingtonpost.com(See also Department of the Interior, False Statements, Corruption)

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was the subject of 14 separate government investigations, but that number could soon be zero because he has fired the Department of the Interior’s acting inspector general, who did not know about this until it was reported in the press, and will be replaced by a Republican lawyer who worked on the Trump campaign and will likely be able to fill the role without needing to go through Senate confirmation.outsideonline.com(See also Corruption, Department of the Interior, Conflicts of Interest)